Our Favourite Jewellery Stories - Part 3
Amazing Jewellery Stories from Everyday Life
Whilst the dramatic, lavish and sometimes tragic jewellery stories of the rich and famous are intriguing and the stories from literature and film so romantic and richly symbolic, some of our very favourite tales are those from real-life. Whilst we are slightly obsessed with Googling lost and found jewellery stories, you don’t have to scour the internet for stories from strangers to read good ones. During our recent giveaway competition we read so many wonderful jewellery stories from our social media followers that we decided to incorporate them into this third chapter of our jewellery stories trilogy.
Recycling a Wartime Wedding Ring
Competition winner Elizabeth’s grandparents got married on Christmas Day early in World War I and shortly afterwards her grandfather, who was serving in the army, had to return to the frontline. He was badly injured at Passchendaele but survived and returned to Elizabeth’s grandmother in the UK, where they were able to have a family and enjoy a happy marriage together. The wedding ring was a family treasure but it fell apart after many long years of wear, so Elizabeth had it made into a necklace to remind her of the bond her grandparents shared.
This story really appealed to us, as we imagined the excitement and happiness of getting married, shortly followed by the heartache and worry of being separated so that Elizabeth’s grandfather could serve his country. We loved the idea that all this emotion and history could be symbolised by a precious necklace, worth far more than its intrinsic value.
Dividing a Necklace to Share the Luck
Our second competition winner, Linda, also had a wedding-related story to share with us. On her parents’ wedding day, her father gave her mother a three-strand necklace made of very good faux pearls. When Linda’s father passed away over 40 years ago her mother had the necklace separated into three. She kept one and gave one to her husband’s sister and one to her daughter (Linda). As Linda’s parents enjoyed a very happy marriage, the necklace has been used as the ‘something borrowed’ in family weddings for subsequent generations, so it is very special.
Our winners’ stories were not the only ones that struck a chord with us, so we selected a few runner-up tales and offered their authors a W&F voucher for letting us share their jewellery yarns.
The Designer Glass Joke
Ciaran’s favourite piece of jewellery is a ring that was made in the 1960s by her Great Uncle Jacques for her great aunt. A French count and a great character, but also a gifted jeweller who worked for the likes of Dior and Cartier during his career, Ciaran’s great aunt always assumed the stone in her ring was an expensive aquamarine.
However, when Ciaran went to get the ring fixed a few years ago, she was told that the stone is in fact glass. This knocks thousands off its price tag but Ciaran doesn’t mind. It makes her smile every time she looks at it, fondly remembering her great uncle's mischievous sense of humour and assuming he set the glass as an elaborate joke. She still hasn’t told her great aunt that her heirloom jewel is actually blue glass in 18ct gold.
The Greek Key Symbol Ring That Stowed Away in a Folder
Another of our competition entrants told us about a ring with a Greek key motif on it, which her father bought for her when she was 15, while the family was on holiday in Greece. A few years later, she was playing with the ring during a sixth form class and it fell off. Despite a thorough search she could not find it and could not even report it as missing, as she shouldn’t have been wearing jewellery to school. Accepting that it was lost forever, Viv carried on with her life as a stroppy teen. Stomping into a room and slamming the belongings she’d been carrying down on a table a few weeks later, she was delighted when the missing ring fell out of her folder (proving it does sometimes pay to have a teenage mood swing). She still has the ring now, a couple of decades later. Rich in memories of a wonderful holiday with her family and hugely sentimental, as it was a gift from her lovely dad, Viv is keen not to lose it again, so she never plays with it while she’s wearing it these days.
An Enduring Reminder of a Great Friend
Competition entrant Caroline’s favourite piece of jewellery is a ring containing a piece of glass that has been specially made using the ashes of her much-loved dog, Oscar. By her side through some really difficult times, including divorce and being diagnosed with (and treated for) cancer, Oscar was a characterful and loving little dog, who kept Caroline going through a truly challenging time in her life. The ring she had made to commemorate him after he died hardly ever leaves her finger, so she takes Oscar and her happy memories of him with her wherever she goes.
Amazing Jewellery Stories from the Worldwide Web
Whilst we are convinced that our competition entrants’ jewellery stories are every bit as good as the ones we found on the internet, we couldn’t resist sharing a few of the best ones we have found recently (especially as it makes the guilty pleasure of searching for them feel like work).
The Avian Thief
We really enjoyed the Tintin mystery of the Castafiore Emerald (which we talked about in our Favourite Jewellery Stories Part 2 blog post), especially the bit where we discover that the criminal in question is a magpie. But avian thieves are not confined to the realms of fiction. We have found a real-life example of a bird who took a fancy to an engagement ring that had been left on a windowsill and took it back to its nest. A few years later the homeowner was working in the garden when they discovered the long-lost ring in the bird’s abandoned nest in the tree outside the window.
The Bounty Hunting Carrot
But this is not the most bizarre story we encountered. It’s strange when a jewellery thief is a bird, it’s even more strange when the lost treasure is found by a vegetable! Canadian, Mary Grams, lost her engagement ring whilst pulling weeds at her Alberta farm. Embarrassed that she had lost her precious diamond engagement ring in this way, she told nobody apart from her son that it was missing.
However, in 2017, more than a decade after the ring was lost and five years after Mary’s husband had died (never knowing that his wife had lost her engagement ring), her daughter-in-law found it in the vegetable patch, when she pulled up a rather lumpy carrot and found the ring embedded in it. The ring was reunited with Mary shortly afterwards and she now leaves it in a safe place before she goes outside.
You can read the full article about the bounty hunting carrot in this BBC article, which will also tell you that this is not the first time a carrot has found a diamond ring. It happened in Sweden in 2011, 16 years after the ring’s owner had lost it, so if you lose a ring in the garden, it could be worth turning the land over to carrot cultivation to see if one of them can find it for you.
The Accidental Garage Sale Bargain
The last real-life jewellery story we have to share with you (on this occasion, we may not be able to resist exploring more stories at a later date) is one where the unexplained gaps in the story are almost more intriguing than the tale itself…
Our story begins with a heavily pregnant lady preparing her home for the arrival of her new baby by doing a spot of tidying up. In the process of putting the place to rights and preparing to go into hospital, she put her $23,000 engagement ring in an old watch box for safekeeping. She then went into hospital to have the baby and had been home for a little while before she realised that her husband had sold the box for $5 at a garage sale while she was gone. The couple shared their story on social media and the new owners of the watch box returned the ring to them shortly afterwards. The most bizarre thing about this is not the lost and found ring story but the fact that the husband was having a garage sale while his wife was in the maternity ward!
We hope you have enjoyed our three-part foray into the world of jewellery stories. If you have a tale you’d like us to share, especially if it is one about a W&F design, do get in touch with us on Instagram or Facebook. We will definitely share our favourite stories on our socials and will be giving W&F vouchers to contributors to help them buy new precious companions for their life adventures.